E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Trip to Lucerne, Switzerland, to Present at IBM Symposium 2008

As I am starting to put together a number of different blog posts sharing some of the highlights from the wonderful Enterprise 2.0 conference event that took place last week in Boston, MA, here I am, once again, on the road, and without hardly any time to breathe in between. Yes, that’s right! I am travelling again! Not even a full day back at home and today I am in Lucerne, Switzerland, for a day or so. Thus, as you can imagine, those highlights entries from the Enterprise 2.0 event will have to wait for a little while longer. But they will be coming around eventually. Not to worry. Along with a bunch of other draft blog posts that I will starting sharing once my travelling spree comes to an end, within the next few days…

So you may be wondering what I am up to in Lucerne, right? Well, a couple of months back, one of my fellow IBM colleagues, Nicole Gross, invited me to participate at the IBM Symposium 2008 event, which will take place during the course of tomorrow. As you would be able to check from the actual Web site, it surely is going to be a packed event and at around 11.10 am CET I will be speaking around the subject that has been keeping me occupied quite a bit during the last few months… Yes, indeed, I will be sharing my story on how I have now given up on e-mail, i.e. corporate e-mail, and use much more heavily social software tools in order to stay equally productive, if not more.

And just like I mentioned in a previous blog post, I have adapted that presentation theme and finalised it with the following title: See the Light – Thinking out of the Inbox.

Over the last four and a half months I have been working my way through escaping corporate e-mail and use social computing tools instead and so far it is looking very promising. I know I have got to blog the last couple of weeks with some of the latest reports and a few other links I have bumped into here and there, but if you have been checking out my Flickr account, you probably have seen already how things are going. But, not to worry, expect those blog posts coming up shortly, too, with some interesting links on the subject that I have bumped into while I have been on the road all this time!

Thus there you go. Tomorrow morning I will be at the IBM Symposium 2008 talking, once more, on the topic of "See the Light – Thinking out of the Inbox" and surprise, surprise, it will not be the last time this week that I will be talking on that very same topic, but in a different city, in a different country. But that would be the story for another blog post! For now, just a quick update on where I am going to spend the first part of this week and why you may need to wait for a little while longer before my regular blogging will resume again… Hang in there!

PS. Oh, and if you would want to meet up for a coffee or a drink, while I am in Lucerne to catch up with each other, get in touch!

Tags: IBM, IBM Symposium, Symposium, Lucerne, Switzerland, Events, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2conf, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, e-mail, No-email, Innovation, Communities, Learning, Social Networks, See the Light

Trip to Boston to Attend Enterprise 2.0 Conference

You may have noticed how things have been rather quieter over here in the last few weeks. From that regular blogging space I have now turned around into some irregular blogging one. And that’s fine. As most of you have noticed already, I have been travelling all over the place quite a bit lately, having returned from Germany a couple of days ago, after I was done with the superb "See the Light 2.0" roadshow and once again I am on the road again! One day of hardly any rest and we are off!

There are LOTS and LOTS of stuff I got piled up in my draft posts that I would want to touch base on and, believe me, they will eventually get there in its due time, but for now allow me to share with you a few details as where I will be this week. Then, as time goes by, I will be coming around those different drafts and share them with you, so that you can get a good overview of what I have been up to in the last few weeks.

But for now, I shall just mentioned how I stayed home last Friday, getting ready to go to one of those events that I always wanted to go to, for the last couple of years, and which this year I have finally been able to make it. I am in Boston, MA (Arrived last night already), and will, at long last, be attending the Enterprise 2.0 conference event! Wooohooo! Yeah, that is exactly how I felt when I got the confirmation details I would be here!

Over the last few hours, I have already been tasting some of what is waiting for me with a whole bunch of folks talking about it and what they are expecting to see. For me, you can imagine how I have plenty of really high expectations and right away I know that they will be met and ever so much more!

As usual, the biggest takeaway for me is going to be the massive networking I will be getting exposed to coming from all over the place! Most of the folks I have been following in the Enterprise 2.0 space are going to be here and I just can’t wait to put a face behind all of our different interactions! About time, too! Indeed! The programme itself is amazingly impressive and to indicate now what sessions I will actually be going for is a bit too soon! This time around I am going to take a different approach. I am going forward with a dynamic agenda. Nothing settled down just yet. Too much I would want to see, and check out, too little time, so I am going to go with the flow and see what catches my attention at that very minute. I already have got some pretty good ideas, but like I said, this time around it is going to be a dynamic one. For sure!

Of course, I will be blogging about it all! In fact, you can expect to have some massively intense period of time where that would be the only thing I will talk about over here. And hope you folks out there would be ok with it. To me, this particular event is one of the most prominent in the Enterprise 2.0 & Social Computing spaces and as such it is going to have a special place in this blog. And that’s why I am shooting for some pretty intense blogging overall coming up in the next couple of weeks, if not longer!

Yes, that is right. I will be blogging about the whole thing pretty intensely, but you would have to allow me to perhaps even go through the event itself. With the massively packed agenda, with some much stuff going on in the Demo Pavilion, along with the various networking activities, as well as various customer meetings from folks over here throughout the week, I doubt I would have some time to capture in blog posts what I will be getting exposed to. And on top of that, the very little time that I had already is way way gone with the massive physical social networking I am planning to do in real life while at the event, which means that I would have to decide whether I would be getting any sleep or blogging. And, of course, sleep will win (Otherwise there is no way I will be up and running properly the next day!!! heh).

So you may be wondering how can you catch up with me during the course of this week, right?, if those blog posts will not be coming up as often as you would expect? Well, I am going to give Twitter another chance. Yes, that is right! You are reading it correctly! Those folks who have been following me in Twitter know how I have been on the brink of giving up on it for good after the massive issues they have been having with its performance. This week though I am giving them just one more chance: The Enterprise 2.0 event. Plenty of folks have been wondering whether Twitter would be one of those tools that could make it to the Enterprise 2.0 space, right? Well, I think this is THE chance for Twitter to prove that! At least, for me.

My good friend Dennis Howlett is actually going to moderate a really good panel on this very same subject, so it would be interesting to see how it would come out in the end. We shall see. You would agree with me how this is going to be one pretty impressive event overall, even if you are not into Drag Queens (;-P), so here is where you would be able to find me during the course of the conference for the entire week: Twitter elsua & Twitter elsuacon.

The first of my two Twitter ids is the one I will be using to carry on with conversations I will be having with folks throughout the event. The one that would be gathering all of my thoughts as I engage into what’s going on. The second one, the elsuacon one, is the one where my Twitterrhea about the various sessions I will be attending is going to go. It is surely going to be pretty intense in there, since I will be capturing thoughts, reactions, feedback, experiences, etc. etc. that I will be using at a later time for my highlights blog posts from the overall event. Main reason why I am going to use that second Twitter id is to basically not to scare off people with far too many tweets! And also because it would allow me to capture quick thoughts without having to elaborate far too much and therefore not miss much in between. Then I will be able to elaborate some more further. So if you think you are brave enough to follow that one, here is the feed you can subscribed to. But, like I said, nothing to worry about. Over the next few weeks I am planning on covering extensively in this blog what I have been experiencing. Somehow I sense it will be a life changing experience. One of those events that will leave a mark (For bad or for good!) and plenty of food for thought on where we are and where we are heading and I am just one of those privileged folks who will be sharing his two cents about such event!

I am ready for the show to get started! Are you?

Let’s get busy then!

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise2.0, E2.0, E20, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Conference Events, Events, Twitter, Dennis Howlett, Drag Queens, Boston, MA, Enterprise2conf

Next08 – Giving up on Work e-mail – Status Report on Week 14

Half way through the "See the Light 2.0" road show here in Germany, that I have been doing over the last couple of days, and which is going to be very difficult to forget for many many moons to come!, it is only now that I am starting to have some more free time to share with you folks some further thoughts on what has been happening over the last couple of weeks. I think it is kind of pointless to actually continue working on my draft blog posts while you are driving through the Autobahn, if you know what I mean

So while I am still here in Köln (Beautiful city, by the way!), I thought I would go ahead and share some more of the highlights from the Next08 event (Probably the last blog post of the series, for the time being) I attended a couple of weeks back in Hamburg (And of which I have talked about already over here a couple of times); at the same time that I share with you all the weekly progress report from my giving up on e-mail new reality, moving on from where I left it before going on the road again: week 14.

Main reason why I wanted to continue talking about Next08 is because of the good amount of comments and offline interactions I have been getting from people to share a specific blog post where I would just point out to the presentation I did, which you already have, but more interestingly to the video recording that a few days back has already been made available on their site. Yes, that is right, something that I mentioned already elsewhere over here, but since it was a bit hidden with some further commentary, I think it would make sense to mention it briefly, once more.

Just recently we all got a notification where it was mentioned how all of the videos from Next08 were already up and running; ready to be watched! Including mine. Unfortunately, I will not be able to embed it over here, so you will have to head over to the main programme site and scroll down till you bump into it. But it is there. In it you will be able find out how over the course of a bit over 30 minutes I cover some of the background of where I am coming from with this new reality of giving up on work related e-mail, where I am heading and trying to achieve, as well as for what purpose(s), and in the end I get to talk about a little bit more hinting the various social software tools I use the most on a regular basis.

So far the feedback I have been receiving has been very positive, but I would certainly like to continue encouraging you all to watch it and provide some further feedback or comments you may have overall on it. Time continues to move forward and as such so has my presentation on "Thinking out of the Inbox", specially after these last few days on this Enterprise 2.0 / Social Computing road show. Quite an eye opener that I would be able to share with you whenever I am done with the overall event in the next couple of days… Thus stay tuned for more to come!

And now that I got that done with, I thought I would share with you the weekly progress report from that week, which would be the 14th consecutive week that I have given up on e-mail at work. Coming closer to the four months already at the time and now that I am just about to hit on the fifth month I can tell you that the results are even better! So here it is:

As you would be able to see I had a peak of 40 e-mails for that week, which although not too bad, it surely was an indication that I couldn’t move away some of those conversations about (conference) events, like I mentioned I would try to do. They were still coming up my way through my Inbox. I am not going to share with you just yet what happened in the following couple of weeks, since in each of them something really remarkable has taken place, so one step at a time, but as you can see, it is still looking good. Very doable and tripling the kind of online social software interactions I have been having thus far, which is helping me stay connected with people and feel that even though I am on the road travelling on a regular basis I can still contribute towards helping others. And not using e-mail!

And, finally, talking about people, if there would be a single key element that I could talk about from the Next08 event in Hamburg, it would be the fact that it is one of those special events where lots and lots of emphasis is placed on the social networking activities. It surely was an amazing experience, both from an organisational perspective as well as from a participant / presenter one. There were two things that immediately caught my attention throughout. One how everyone got a chance to come over and share their thoughts with their favourite speakers. That is how I got to know plenty more Stowe Boyd, Steve Rubel, Markus Angermeier, Tina Pickhardt, Sarik Weber,  Matthias Schrader, of course! (And his entire team! Well done, guys!!!) and many many more, including a whole bunch of IBMers (Yes, yes, you know who you are! heh). I know I will be keeping up with them in various social computing tools, like Twitter, whenever it would be working properly again. But one thing, for the sure, the first face to face contact has been made successfully. The rest will be coming along through nicely as time goes by and till the next event!

The second thing is to re-discover how healthy Web 2.0, along with Enterprise 2.0, is becoming in Germany. I already knew from my various interactions that Germany was on the right track, and to be honest, during that particular event I had the certainty of diving into conversations with an incredibly smart talent who are not only exploring the limits of Web 2.0, but they are taking them to the extreme to see where they can push them within the corporate world! And, not sure what you think, folks, but I am incredibly excited about it, because it comes to prove that it is not just America and Asia doing some really good things in this space, but also Germany, along with the UK and a couple of other countries, like Italy, where things are starting to turn around in the right direction: our direction!

Thus I am not sure about you, but I am surely looking forward to Next09. Will you be there? I hope I will. For sure!

Tags: IBM, See the Light, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, e-mail, email, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Innovation, Productivity, Conversations, Dialogue, Openness, Progress Reports, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Collaboration 2.0, Communication, Conference Events, Hamburg, Köln, Autobahn, Germany, Next08, Next 08, Twitter, Stowe Boyd, Steve Rubel, Markus Angermeier, Tina Pickhardt, Sarik Weber,   Matthias Schrader, Next09